July 2011



The out of town guests begin arriving:



Tom and Roger play croquette on July 4th



Dad and Rosalie at The Downrigger

My Dad, at age 89, took a bus to downtown Seattle, got off at the Convention Center, found his way to the BelAire Shuttle bus stop, rode the bus to Anacortes Ferry Terminal, waited for two hours for the ferry and walked on for me to pick him up in Friday Harbor to visit with my sister and myself for five days over the Fourth of July holiday.  I was so proud of him!

The date has been set and the invitations have been sent for my Dad's 90th birthday party here on San Juan Island.  June 9 & 10, 2012.  This will be a Barreca family reunion as well.  That means the countdown has begun.  I have 11 months to get this place in shape.  I started last Sunday by sending Roger up a ladder with a chainsaw.  He limbed up or cut half a dozen trees.  Amazing how much more light comes through!

preparing for Soroptimist entry in Fourth of July parade

I participated in the Fourth of July parade as a clown.  The theme was: Life Is a Laugh in a Costume.



My brother Joe's blog  always has something relevant in it.  This time he talks about (among other things) the 50th reunion of his 8th grade class.  This Fall we are celebrating the 40th reunion of my high school class and I have been helping my best friend from High School who has volunteered to host a barbecue in September.  We have been trying to use Facebook and Classmates.com and other websites to find and invite our former classmates.  Roger heard a news story about Facebook making reunions irrelevant--no need to meet in person when you can catch up with each other's lives in the cloud.  

It is amazing the memories that one can resurrect just by leafing through the yearbook.  We had a relatively small graduation class and add to that the fact that I was the editor of the yearbook . . .  I'm feeling a lot more connected than I thought I would be to these OLD classmates.  More on this subject after the reunion in September.



We hosted a potluck at our house last Friday.   It's good to get the social obligations out of the way early in the summer.  That way, the place is looking good (the lawn is mowed, the fire pit carved out from the overgrown brush) much earlier than it otherwise would have been.  Along with weekly potlucks, July brings Shakespeare on the lawn, the arrival of 100 tribal canoes, an arts festival, the Lavender Festival, among other events.  Summer is in Full Swing!